The Law of Dreams Page 27

  Untying her boots, he began to chafe her ankles and feet. Molly’s eyes were shut; her face glistened.

  “In my country of Faha they come to see me,” the old woman was saying. “I have a blue bottle and can see ahead what hasn’t happened if you pay me a shilling, or two pounds good butter. And I have the healing stones to cure the pig —”

  “Ignorant old witch! An old poison cook is what you are!” Mrs. Coole snapped.

  “Oh don’t say so, missus! Don’t speak so harsh — you don’t know me.”

  THEY STOOD in a queue while Mr. Blow, the master, distributed rations: half a pound of yellow meal, half a pound of ship’s biscuit, and a piece of salt beef, with two quarts of fresh water pumped into their pails or kettles. Children received half rations.

  The old woman stood behind them. “You must soak the awful beef in fresh water or the salt will burn your mouth,” she warned. “Blisters the insides, and you’ll shit yellow sprue.”

  Coole was ahead of them in the queue. “What arrangements for cooking?” Fergus heard him ask the master.

  “We ain’t a packet. See for yourselves. You’ll have to rough it.”

  “Yes,” Coole persisted, “but where are the stoves?”

  “Two cabooses to be set on deck. You’ll have one hour at morning and another at evening to cook your mush, weather permitting. If I see any fuss about the fires, I’ll have them doused.”

  “Two hundred souls aboard, and only two stoves?”

  “You watch your tone with me, you damned Irish rebel, or you shan’t have no fire at all. Step away now. Next!”

  * * *

  AS SOON as they smelled smoke, passengers seized their pans and kettles and raced up the ladder to the main deck where the two cabooses were smoking. Wooden boxes, the size and shape of coffins, lined with bricks and set with iron grills, they had been stuffed with coal and lit by a sailor carrying a pan of red embers from the galley.

  Passengers mobbed the stoves, fighting for space to cook their food. He was ready to join the fight but Molly touched his arm.

  “No use, man, you’d only get spilled.”

  Sailors were laughing at them. Kettles were knocked over, yellow meal and water sloshing on the deck.

  “I could sort out this riot in ten seconds if they’d let me.” Molly sounded frustrated.

  “They’d never let a woman,” Mrs. Coole said.

  “Get back from the stoves!” The master appeared at the afterdeck rail with a speaking trumpet. “Step away!”

  Sailors were lowering buckets over the side and hauling them up full of seawater. As they dashed the coals, yellow steam blanketed the deck and the riot broke up, people coughing and wiping their eyes and searching for their children.

  “Get below! I’ll keep you below like a cargo of niggers if you won’t behave!”

  Sailors swinging tarry rope-ends were starting to drive people below when Molly called up to the master on the afterdeck. “Let me organize the rations mister! I can tell you how it’s done.”

  The master was young, with raw pink skin and yellow hair. He glared at her. “Don’t screech at me, you harridan; I know how to handle an Irish mob. They’ll serve up very meek when they’re hungry enough.”

  “All they want is fairness.” Her voice was just firm enough to carry. “Divide us into shanties — call six berths a shanty. Cook-of-the-day to collect all rations and do the stirabout for the others. That way you’ve ten cooks instead of fifty at the stoves, and you won’t worry about them knocking into one another and fire being spilled.”

  “They can live on biscuit and see if they like it!”

  “We only want things fair, the rations cooked soft enough. You’d kill us off with raw yellow.”

  “Go below, miss,” the young master said wearily. “I’ve had enough Irish.”

  “WE’RE CROSSING, ain’t we?” she whispered. “Tell me it’s so, man.”

  “It is. We are.”

  The old woman had dosed her, and she’d wept for a while, but now seemed hazy, near sleep. He had curtained off their berth with a German blanket. For his supper he’d gnawed weird, thick biscuit and some cheese and onion, but she’d had no stomach for food.

  “No sea monsters, man,” she whispered. “No storms nor glooms nor ship fever shall stop us.”

  “No they won’t, not now.”

  “My God,” she whispered, “we are rocking for America, Fergus, and nothing in our way.”

  Nothing, only the sea.

  She fell asleep after a while but he couldn’t. More than half of those lying in the hold were ill, and the air of sickness was pungent and nasty. He lay looking up at green lumber framing their berth. Berths had been fitted crudely into the real build of the vessel, her solid timbers. Passengers did not belong aboard this ship; they were an afterthought, an encumbrance. The master was disgusted by them. Sailors pushed them about like cattle.

  Cattle would have been easier to handle, and might sell at a profit, too.

  The slats above his head creaked, and he heard Mrs. Coole being sick in a pail. “Oh give me some water, Martin,” she groaned.

  “Here, my sweet,” Coole whispered. “Let me rub your lips a little.”

  The air was clogged with stink.

  Fergus pushed back the blanket and swung his legs out of the berth. Molly muttered and rolled over and he tucked the blanket carefully around her. The only light came from an oil lamp swinging on a beam as he groped toward the ladder. The floor was slippery, but the motion of the ship thrilled him, its energy and sway; he climbed up through the hatchway and out into a cold, smashing breeze.

  The Constant Sky

  THE MAIN DECK WAS DESERTED. On the afterdeck, he saw two sailors manning the wheel, and the yellow-haired master prowling back and forth.

  Forward, he saw light in the galley, where the crew’s rations were cooked. Hoping for a light for his pipe, he started that way.

  Inside the little galley shed he found a black man and a little one-eared sailor sitting by a stove, puffing their pipes.

  “May I take a light?”

  The black man studied him then nodded. Using tongs, Fergus lifted a coal and lit his pipe.

  “Did you ship plenty of tobacco, Mike?” the one-eared sailor asked him.

  “A little.”

  “Any liquor, any of that wild Irish fume?”

  Fergus shrugged.

  “I’ll try your backer, so.” The sailor held out his pipe. “Come, come, give us a fill.”

  He gave them each a pinch of tobacco.

  Braising in the fiery heat of the stove, they smoked in silence, the noise of the ship filling in for talk. Hemp squeaking. Canvas snug with wind. The splash of the sea, racing along her side.

  The men had nothing to say to him and after a while he went out to stand by the bulwark, smoking, looking at the sea.

  The world is strangers.

  “Can you spare a light?” a voice called.

  Looking up, Fergus saw the old man who had earlier been watching the passengers swarm aboard. He was standing at the head of the afterdeck ladder, an old silver man in a fur coat; he looked like an enormous badger.

  Fergus drew on his pipe to make it crackle, and the old man swung himself down the ladder, quick and lithe for an old fellow, and came forward to light his cigar. “Thank you.”

  “Are you the captain?”

  The old man shook his head. “Cabin passenger. Out of Ireland, like the rest of you. The master, young Mr. Blow, he’s your captain.”

  The earthy aroma of the cigar recalled the Dragon and faces of girls probably dead.

  “They’re quite ill down below, I suppose?” the old man asked.

  “Yes, some of them.”

  “Get worse before they get better.”

  Spray broke over the bow, crackling on the fo’c’sle and deckhouse.

  “There will soon be no one left in Ireland, only the crows,” the old man said. “All I mind about leaving is having to sell off my horses.
Sold off three good animals, to squireens who won’t use them well.”

  They smoked in silence for a while. The sea unsurprised, careless of their existence. A ship was small out here, and Liverpool unreal in memory, as if his experiences there had all been a dream.

  “They run wonderful strong ponies, up the country where I’m headed,” the old man said suddenly.

  “What country is that?”

  “The pays d’en haut. Athabaska. A rich man, a hunting chief, will have a hundred buffalo runners. Not so grand as the Irish hunter, but wiry and rugged. Plenty of heart.”

  “I had to sell a horse myself.”

  “Yes, well. The world is cruel to horses.” The man drew on his cigar.

  “Good long bones he had,” Fergus said, thinking of the blue. “I wish he don’t end up back on the railway contracts. I’d rather have shot him than think he was back there.”

  “When I was at Fort Edmonton, war parties used to come up the river, to barter with us. The Blackfoot steal the best horses from a thousand miles around. Called us old women, for I wouldn’t send apprentices out to trade with them, but made the hunting chiefs step into the palisade, one at a time, leaving their guns and knives outside.”

  Stories always started this way, suddenly, and set within a strange world. Patience is required, to let the stories unroll.

  This is how people explain their lives.

  “Ponies, pemmican, and slaves was what they had for trade. The Blackfoot aren’t trappers. They make no fur, theirs is not a beaver country. And their young men — the brave dogs — despise to hunt anything but buffalo. A Blackfoot brave dog won’t kill if he can’t kill from horseback.”

  None of it was clear — black dogs, on horseback? — but he kept his ears open, listening.

  “The slaves were captures — Cree, Crow, Kiowa. Sometime I’d buy ’em on the Company account, just to spare their lives. Buy ’em cheap — a few grains of powder. Bought my son for some powder and ten pounds of lead.”

  “You bought your son?”

  The old man nodded. “A brave dog has no use for prisoners. No use for most trade goods. Oh, their women like a kettle. English woolen blankets they demand as presents. But all a brave dog cares for is a good gun, and only the best English makes will do. No trade muskets for them. A good gun, powder, lead for bullets, a little brandy. You’ll never see better horsemen than the grass nations. Ride rings around the dragoons. My boy running buffalo at the full gallop would spit the bullets into his gun.”

  He struggled to get a purchase on the old man’s story. “Blackfoot . . . ribbonmen, are they?”

  The old man grunted. “An Irishman might call them so.”

  “Is it the landlords they are after?”

  “No, they own their country themselves, or think they do.” The old man puffed quietly for a few moments. “Where is it you’re heading for?”

  “America.”

  “Anyplace in particular? Any people?”

  “No.”

  “William Ormsby is my name. My son was Daniel. Such as we called him anyway. His name in Blackfoot was Many Gray Horses. His Crow name was the Constant Sky. Well, good night, good luck.” Swinging up the ladder with some agility, he disappeared on the afterdeck.

  Fergus remained at the rail, watching the sea slashing along the hull.

  America you thought of in strident ignorance as a summer country, booley pasture in the mountains.

  You saw yourself working the stream, spear in hand.

  Striking the great fish as it rose for the light.

  Cailleach Feasa

  IN THE MORNING, with the first sliver of light falling in the hold, the little one-eared sailor came halfway down the ladder and informed them they were to divide themselves into messes. “Orders of Mr. Blow. Six berths to a mess, one cook-of-the-day from each mess to collect the rations.” Hanging on to the ladder, the sailor peered around the dim hold, where most of the passengers lay helpless in their berths, too sick to think of food. “Poor old mikes — but you shall feel better when we’re out of this rocking sea and into the western ocean. Anyone wishing to do a little trading, of tobacco say, or spirits of any sort — see me in the fo’c’sle. Nimrod Blampin is my name.”

  Molly’s upper lip was raw and flaky, and there were dark clouds, almost bruises, around each eye. She was too weak to climb out of the berth.

  “Wish to die, man,” she whispered.

  “No you won’t, sweetheart.”

  The blanket he’d rigged for a curtain was suddenly pulled aside, and the old woman peered in on them. “Get away, man! Let me see her.”

  Mrs. Coole, arms crossed, stood with Fergus as they watched the old woman run her hands over Molly, feeling her throat, breasts, belly, under her arms. Molly writhed and groaned.

  “Drink this now, lovely.” Removing the stopper from a little bottle, Brighid tapped amber liquid into a spoon.

  “Fergus?”

  “Here I am.”

  “I’m not well, man, not well, I’ve got the grumps.”

  “You’ll feel better soon, though.”

  “An old woman of my country would put poison in a well, then you must pay her to cure your cattle,” Mrs. Coole said loudly. “When the farmers found out, they wanted to hang her.”

  Ignoring them, the old woman raised Molly’s head.

  “This old ship is rocking me to death, it is!” Molly whispered.

  “Take this now.” Brighid held the spoonful to her lips.

  “I want to walk on the ground —”

  “There, there,” the old woman crooned, “just a drop more.”

  “I want to walk on the ground!”

  COOLE’S SON slipped off the ladder and fell down into the hold, giving a scream that broke off abruptly when he landed. Passengers gathered around the little boy, lying on the ’tween deck, perfectly still.

  “Is he dead?”

  “Does he breathe?”

  When Fergus knelt and touched him the boy’s chest moved, a kind of sigh.

  Onlookers parted, letting through Mrs. Coole. Stunned, she knelt by her son.

  “Better move him to a berth,” one of the onlookers said. “If it was my boy, missus, I’d wrap him warm and keep him still.”

  Martin Coole stood by, gulping and wringing his long, thin hands.

  Forcing her way through the crowd, Brighid knelt and began running her fingertips over the lifeless boy. “A cold, wet sheet is what you want,” a woman passenger advised. “Wrap him up tight and if he still won’t come around you’d better bleed him.”

  Paying no attention, Brighid continued her examination while Mrs. Coole hovered anxiously. When Brighid finished she stood up with a grunt and pushed her way out through the ring of onlookers.

  “Look at his color,” the woman passenger was saying. “Wrap him in cold wet cloth, missus, and carry him up and give him a dose of the cold air.”

  Mrs. Coole kept stroking her son’s arms, and a moment later Brighid returned, shaking a brown bottle. Pulling out the stopper, she began waving the bottle under the boy’s nose. Fergus could see her lips moving in incantation.

  Poetry, he thought. A spell.

  “You won’t revive him with whispers! His blood wants stirring! You ought to bleed him.”

  The boy’s eyelids suddenly fluttered. The crowd murmured.

  The boy stirred. His eyes flapped open and he looked around wildly. Taking his hand, Brighid kissed it.

  “A sore head, and a bruise — he’ll have the flowers of June on his hip for a while, but nothing broken.” She nodded at Mrs. Coole, who gathered up the frightened child and hugged him tight, her shoulders shaking with ugly sobs.

  “GOOD FOR her, the damned old juice,” Molly said. She was twisting and grimacing while Fergus rubbed her belly and legs to ease her cramps. “She’ll sell her gunk for a good price now.”

  ALL DAY Laramie had been caught in a pack of ships moving restlessly up and down a mountainous coast, stalled by rough seas and light
winds. He stood on the main deck looking at the snowy peaks. The old man, Ormsby, was on the afterdeck, peering through a brass tube.

  “What country is it?” Fergus called.

  “North Wales.”

  The railway country.

  “The last of Britain we’ll set eyes on,” Ormsby said, “and good riddance.”

  Good-bye to you, poor horses.

  If they dropped her into the waves, what would become of her?

  She’d have been better off staying in the camp.

  She’d have been better off with Muldoon, safer.

  Hearing children’s voices up in the bow, chanting the ABCs, he headed forward, feeling the wet smack of wind on his face. The voices came from the windlass housing, a small shelter on the foredeck, exposed on the lee side.

  Underneath, protected from rain and wind, Coole was sitting with long legs crossed and a red book in his hands. His two children were perched on coils of rope. Coole was giving them a lesson.

  Fergus recognized the red book, the Dublin Universal Speller. The old Waterloo hero, his occasional schoolmaster on the mountain, had owned a copy.

  His rare days as a scholar he had loved — walking across the mountain, carrying a penny for the lesson and a lump of turf for the schoolroom fire. The Waterloo hero had told them stories of battles and smoke, Frenchmen, cavalry on enormous horses, cannon shining gold in the sun.

  Coole’s boy and girl finished chanting through their letters, then Coole passed the book to the girl. She started reading aloud in a piping voice that didn’t carry well across the deck. Coole beckoned to Fergus, but he shook his head and took a step back.

  He watched the little girl finish the passage then pass the book to her brother, who began reading aloud.

  He kept watching them until he heard the bos’n’s whistle, the signal that daily rations were being distributed. Then he turned away, heading for the hatchway to collect their water cans and kettle. He yearned to read; it was another hunger.

  What you wanted would keep you going.

  “THAT BEEF will be fresh enough now,” Brighid said. “Go ahead, cut it up.”